Everybody is entertained to death.

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

Everything is an experiment until it has a deadline. That gives it a destination, context, and a reason.

Well, I am a dilettante. It's only in England that dilettantism is considered a bad thing. In other countries it's called interdisciplinary research.

Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

In times of great darkness, courage lights the way home.

We are confusing making “progress” with eradicating the larger problem.

There are friendships merely for pleasure, some for the exchange of ideas. Rarest are those friends of one's inmost self.

I've always said I write albums; I don't write random songs and then sort them out.

When I was little I always thought I was marked out, special, on the verge of something momentous. I used to tingle with anticipation.

I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question.

False hopes are more dangerous than fears.

If you fail to plan, you pretty much plan to fail.

I sometimes get up at night when I can't sleep and walk down into my library and open one of my books and read a paragraph and say, 'My God, did I write that?

Ninety-nine percent of everything you do in life is attitude. If you have a relationship with God...you're going to learn to ask the one question in life that covers everything: How can I help you?